Los Alamos National Laboratory is trying again to block access to the so-called “Poor Man’s Shooting Range,” located about a half-mile east of the Los Alamos Sportsman’s Club entrance.

The lab announced that vehicle access to the location in Rendija Canyon will be prohibited starting Monday.

The unregulated, unofficial shooting area has been a dumping ground and a concern to the lab for decades.

“People dump all kinds of items there for shooting, including televisions, household appliances and the occasional abandoned vehicle,” said Andrew Erickson of LANL Utilities and Infrastructure. “The area is also bullet riddled, so we are prohibiting access because this is a sensitive environmental segment of Rendija.”

The entrance will now be chained and “No Trespassing” signage will be posted, as well as signs identifying the area as environmentally sensitive.

In the summer of 2003, LANL installed a fence across the entrance to the area.

“I guess people keep breaching that fence,” lab spokesman James Rickman said this morning. “I don’t know who they are, people who don’t have a problem with dumping things in the woods and then shooting them, or shooting things that have been dumped there.”

The shooting range is a 10-acre piece of a 900-acre parcel owned by DOE and managed by LANL.

The ten acres is not part of the pending land transfer to Los Alamos County.

The area is off Rendija Canyon Road, also named Forest Road 57, northeast of Los Alamos.

Residents are asked not to enter the area and those who do will be subject to trespassing charges, Erickson said in the announcement.